FicWad

Robert tells me that he and Lucas didn’t even realise that their conversation went on for another three hours. A nervous-looking barista would come over to them from time to time, prompted by their manager desperate to sell more coffee on the slow-going day, asking if they would like more coffee, each time Robert would say yes when Lucas would tend to decline. Robert would only sip his coffee between long sentences, most of the time having let it go cold, before he realised he should finish it.

Lucas listened intently to practically every word that Robert said to him. At one point he even asked the Englishman if he could get out his notebook and write down some of it; of course Robert agreed, laughing about it as Lucas spent a few minutes in total silence and concentration, translating what he had already learned into complicated French for the page. As Robert watched him, the Frenchman’s lips would move silently as he spoke to himself; something he would discover that he did an awful lot.

Robert went off on a tangent for every single point he made, each digression having its own, and many times Lucas would ask him to stop because he was talking about anything and everything at the same time, and too fast. Robert didn’t know if it was his passion spurring him on, or the caffeine from latte after latte on the table in front of him, but he was getting very enthusiastic and very loud. But eventually he figured that it was because he had gone the best part of two years, maybe even three years, without anyone to talk to about his art, ever since Fernanda stopped her art lessons and Robert’s mother was put into care due to her developing dementia. Robert had been alone for so long, been deprived of the opportunity to talk to another artist; let alone another artist that understood - or at least understood what he could - and was willing to listen. A lot of the ‘artists’ Robert had met in his life were nothing like him; they thought that his philosophical spoken word about the meaning, importance and power of art was simply mindless drivel, some of them mocking him and joking that he should have chosen to pursue poetry. It was such a refreshing feeling for Robert, having Lucas on the other side of the table in that small café, drinking in coffee as well as every single word that the older artist said. Robert felt important for the first time in so long.

But, eventually, Lucas noted the time and was forced to excuse himself, as he had to be getting home to do something reasonably important. As he stood up, Lucas accidentally knocked over his half-full cup of cold coffee with the back of his hand, causing coffee to spill everywhere, all over the table, his notes, over Robert’s jeans beneath the table as it spilled over the sides too. Lucas panicked while Robert laughed, despite the scowling he was receiving from the woman behind the café counter. Lucas was repeatedly muttering in French about being sorry, along with some profanities Robert may have recognised, helping him mop up the mess with napkins.

Robert decided to leave the café with Lucas, figuring he had pushed his luck with the barista enough despite having paid a hefty sum for their coffee, and as he padded along the pavement with the young French boy he was almost sulking about their encounter coming to an end, instead of sulking about the fact that he was now walking around smelling like coffee and spoiled milk, and looking like he had let his bladder go.

“Ici,” Lucas said, taking Robert’s wrist and extending his arm, taking his pen out of the breast pocket of his jacket and scribbling eleven digits onto the artist’s pale skin. “That’s the telephone number of my flat. I’d like to see you again – you’re very interesting.” Robert let himself smile at the fact that Lucas had once again repeated his blunt but at the same time broad description of the Englishman.

“Of course,” Robert said, nodding as his smile widened, and then he glanced at the sky. It was streaked with orange behind the taller buildings, little black clouds dusting the brighter colours. It being late afternoon, it would be dark very soon, as these colours were merely the remnants of a spectacular sunset they had missed. It was cold outside, colder than before. “I’d love to talk to you again.” His eyes met Lucas’ at that point, the light bouncing off his fair skin and giving it a divine glow, his lips curling up into a gentle smile, Robert noticing a dusting of freckles across the bridge of Lucas’ nose and under his eyes.

“I have to be going this way,” Lucas said, gesturing off down one end of the street. He was smiling at first but then his face was dampened by a slight frown. “Je pense…”

“Well,” Robert said, rocking forward on the balls of his feet, ignoring the uncomfortable wet and cold patches of spilled coffee touching his skin through his jeans. He looked at Lucas and then down the opposite end of the street to where he had pointed. “I have to go this way. I’ll see you sometime, I guess.” His smile softened and he felt regretful about their parting. Lucas was beaming again though and he brushed his pale blonde hair from his face with his left hand as he extended his right.

“I hope so,” he said, and Robert shook his hand, though somewhat reluctantly. “Yes, okay. Bonsoir,” He retracted his hand and took a step backwards, waving at the artist. Robert gestured his hand in the same notion, before nodding and going to turning around, to head the way he needed to go. As he turned he halted. He saw - and Robert tells me while beaming that he remembers this vividly, not just like a hazy dream but a cinematic film - Lucas taking a packet of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his jacket and lighting one of them, cupping his fingers around the lighter flame, his cheekbones sticking out shockingly as he hollowed his cheeks with an inhalation. Smoke drifted from his nose and up into the sky, and for a few moments Robert was captivated by this image. He forced himself not to look back, an irrational feeling of loss and disappointment overcoming him, something akin to crippling helplessness; the sudden feeling of being alone in an unfamiliar place, in pitch darkness.

Robert walked home in a dreamy state, taken over by his grief and loneliness but also getting rather close to feeling euphoric and enlightened. Lucas had listened to him and asked him questions like a student would a teacher. Lucas had been generally interested in him and everything he had to say. Robert could hardly get over that – he might even have inspired him. Robert’s head was spinning. He had never been anything close to an inspiration to anyone.

It was dark when Robert stepped inside his flat and locked the door behind him. He shrugged out of his jacket and slung it over the back of the sofa, still operating partly on auto-pilot. Being back inside, in such a familiar place, made him feel like a blue whale in a goldfish bowl. For the afternoon he had been strolling inside his own mind, figuratively grasping Lucas’ hand and giving him a guided tour, and now he felt trapped in his safest place on earth.

That day had amazed him and broken him collectively. Looking at Lucas’ number scrawled in messy handwriting on his arm that looked like a spider’s scrawl, Robert felt giddy. He was reminded of their conversations once again, as if he couldn’t get them out of his head anyway. He started thinking about things they could perhaps talk about next time, and maybe the time after that, and for days to come. Inspired, he took a pencil from the coffee table in front of the sofa and wrote the French boy’s number on his wall, going over the digits until they were bold and almost black and the tip of the pencil lead had snapped off. Lucas’ number was on his wall. He stared at it and in that moment it had been necessary. He guessed that would need it; in fact, he knew he would need it. Hell, he knew he would need Lucas. This new, exciting figure that had ruptured the monotonous pattern of his life. He needed someone who was interested, or even mildly interesting, for once. He needed an artist. Fernanda had told him to keep those with art in their hearts closer to him than anybody else. Yes, he would keep Lucas close. He needed more art in his life; even though he already had more than enough; if there was even such a thing as having too much art.

Robert spent that night painting and this was unusual because Robert did not like to paint at night. It left him feeling drained and barely accomplished when he slept straight afterwards. Painting often made him too tired to function after a long period of time; but not always. There were the rare times that nothing at all could stop him from painting, even at night, and there was so much inspiration around him and inside him that he would fuel the fire until it could burn no brighter and he would have to let it fade. He could feel the art running through him, like he was holding electricity inside him and it was making him dance, like a puppet. He could feel something in his veins that made him feel invincible. That was how Robert felt on this particular night.

At first, Robert wasn’t too sure what he was painting, but that went for most of his paintings in the beginning. But he painted stars, the city, cigarette smoke and clouds, spilt coffee. Things that reminded him, and did not remind him, of the young French artist he had spent a large portion of his day with. Robert didn’t dare paint the boy. Instead he sketched him, faceless, tortured by how conventionally attractive he was, tormented by his flawlessness that he was unable to capture with charcoal. The beauty wasn’t even entirely held by his face. [Robert pauses at this point. He takes a long look at my notes from where he sits across the table, and he sighs. There is something in his eyes that is cripplingly upsetting for me to look at because I can see one of the many fractures in his heart, appearing to me. As he admits to me how beautiful Lucas was to him, he makes his weakness for him clear. These cracks, I realise, run deep.] There was a grace to the way Lucas’ hair fell over his face and curled ever so slightly at the ends. There was lightness in the way he walked – Robert himself couldn’t even walk down one side of the pavement in a straight line. Lucas’ clothes were beautiful; hell, put those clothes on Robert, or even a normal person and they’d look like they were trying to be something they just weren’t. Maybe it was just a French thing, French fashion can only look good on the French, but Lucas looked so stylish while also looking so disheveled and completely like a student, if there were even a fashion archetype for such a thing. He looked like a city boy and he was a city boy. Foreign but aesthetically he was so pleasing; he fit into the city but just the way he wore things – it amazed Robert. Robert still hadn’t grown out of wearing paint-stained jeans and old tee shirts.

That is why Robert didn’t draw Lucas’ face when he sketched him. It had nothing to do with his ability this time – normally Robert wouldn’t want to draw someone’s face because he would not do them justice due to his lack of skill. Drawing Lucas was different. There was so much to focus on, so many little details to look at beside the pretty ones on his face. Robert could have been obsessed with him, the amount of details he was putting in. He tells me, with a forced chuckle, that he was definitely obsessed with him, from the very start. When sketching, he would never think to add the patterned stitching on a jacket, or the exact way the hair curls, or the tiny hairs around the ankles. Every single thing he could remember he sketched, being careful to not include his high and hollow cheekbones, his misty blue-grey eyes, his dark and shining rosy lips, nor his skin, so pale and bright that it looked translucent and vampiric.

The drawing was amazing by Robert’s low standards of his sketches. With a pencil he always compared himself as with a paint brush and he did not feel anywhere near the same drawing as he did painting. He could not force himself to enjoy it more and his drawings were of lower quality because he had such a low opinion of his skill, but drawing Lucas had been the right thing to do. He would leave the drawing faceless, and maybe try a face later on. Lucas had mentioned he especially liked to do portraits; he figured he could get a few tips. He laughed at the thought – two artists barely far from strangers to each other sharing tips on how to make an artwork out of the other.­

Robert lit a cigarette and looked at the cigarette he had drawn between Lucas’ thin fingers, left undetailed for now, and remembered the way the French boy had smoked. Robert swore that everything he saw in Lucas and on Lucas was ordered out of a damn catalogue, even his mannerisms. He seemed so perfect, physically, even tiny things like the small quirks of his confused eyebrows or his little interested smiles, they seemed to go unidentified and without flaw, and if he hadn’t been so overwhelmed by this fact then Robert would be a little jealous, even maybe angered slightly by it. He didn’t seem it fair for a person, especially an artist, to be such a way; they weren’t ever meant to be beautiful, but the French boy he had met that afternoon was not too far off having his beauty compared to that of an angel.

Robert wondered, eyes moving to the phone number made clear on the wall of his living room, when he would next see the young artiste from Marseilles. Would it be soon, and what would they then do? Or would it be a long time from now? When the shock of meeting another artist, the obsession, had faded? No, Robert decided, as he sat there with his brown eyes shifting between his own art and the one thing linking him back to another artist. He knew that he had to keep Lucas close. Lucas was, from that moment, important to him. Never before had someone had such an inspirational influence on Robert, and while he reveled in it he wanted to always do so. He had been told to cling to people like Lucas the French artist and from that moment he knew he was going to do just that.

**

It was a Tuesday, and over a week had passed since Robert had met Lucas. He had pondered several times on the thought of calling the French boy on the number he had left, the number Robert had scribbled on his living room wall, the dark digits a stark contrast to the cream-coloured walls. But he hadn’t gone through with it, despite not being able to get Lucas and their previous conversations out of his head. Robert had been painting even more than he usually did since that Saturday, and on this particular morning he had come to work with fresh paint spatter on his jeans, not having been able to save his painting urges for when he returned home, his hands smelling of turpentine and still stained blue and red around his nails and finger pads. This all seemed to have amused Michelle, the plain young woman that worked in the café with Robert, who decided to point out the mess Robert had made of his clothes as he took his black apron and name tag from his coat hook in the back room.

“Painting again?” She asked with a small smile, eyes running up over Robert’s body, trying to distinguish between the old paint stains and the new ones. Robert just smiled at her, shrugging. “You know, it really should make you look scruffy. But it doesn’t.”

“That’s because I’m an artist.” Robert laughed a little, almost chuckling, and he moved to step past her into the café itself, already getting to work with opening the place for the day. She didn’t say anything in response.

Let me pause here and say a word or two about this young woman. Michelle Anderson is a few months younger than Robert, and had worked in the café for just as long as he had. I had, of course, heard her name long before I decided to document this story as she had been in the press an awful lot after Robert and Lucas’ escapade was cut short; though she refused to say much at all. In fact, when I asked to interview her for this book, she declined. Therefore anything I write, comes from Robert’s knowledge that Michelle was, at one point or another, in love with him.

Work was slow for Robert that day. Days in the mid-week were always quiet after the morning rush, with only one or two customers every hour. Robert and Michelle’s manager, Kate, had taken the day off sick, which wasn’t really surprising as the weather was turning cold so quickly, and Michelle had been down with a bad cold last week anyway. Robert was preoccupied though, as he made cappuccinos to go and put Belgian buns into grease paper bags, and wiped down tables repeatedly with a ragged dishtowel. He couldn’t make himself stop thinking about when he could call Lucas, what he could say to him, when they could next see each other again. Anyone would have thought that Robert was in love with this French boy. His head was spinning with thoughts of him that were apparently becoming obvious on his face.

“What’re you grinning about over there?” Michelle’s voice made Robert jump, and he quickly realised he had been staring into space and wiping down the same small table for about five minutes. He cleared his throat.

“Uh,” he started, before laughing in the back of his throat, a light and soft sound that was always oddly comforting to Michelle. She smiled, too. “Nothing. I don’t know.” They smiled at each other and Michelle shook her head, leaning her elbows on the counter she stood behind.

“You’re always daydreaming, Robert,” she said, and she bit her lip, adjusting a ring on her right forefinger, before moving her hands up to her head to neaten her hair that hung in loose waves around her shoulders. She had been keeping it down for the past few weeks in the hope that Robert would say something, but he never had. “What’re you thinking about half the time?” His eyebrows furrowed before he arched them both.

“I don’t know,” he said, though not honestly, and he shrugged again. Michelle gave up, rolling her eyes and trying to make the notion look playful, while really she was disappointed. Robert never told her anything. She was still dwelling on this when Robert excused himself to take a smoke break.

Michelle brought Robert tea in one of the café’s cardboard cups as he stood outside the back of the building, leaning against the grimy wall with his arms folded against his chest, goose-bumps on his skin from the bitter cold of the day, a cigarette between the fingers of his right hand. He smiled at Michelle to thank her when he took the cup, and she gave him a hopeful smile back, letting it fade from her small mouth after realising they weren’t going to have a conversation, raising his cigarette to his lips and taking a long drag on it. Michelle didn’t stick around to watch his cheeks hollow more or to watch the smoke drift up into the clouds, along with Robert’s mind.

When Robert stepped back into the warmth of the café he shuddered, rubbing his upper arms and closing the back door, sitting down on one of the counters and letting out a soft sigh. Michelle sighed with him. Neither of them hated their job, but they hated days like this. Robert was thinking too much about Lucas, too.

The next two hours at the café slowly filled up with more customers, and just as things were picking up Robert’s shift ended, as always with these certain days. As he hung up his apron in the café’s back room, Robert felt a surge of inspiration or rather, courage to make a phone call, and he knew he had to call Lucas now, otherwise he never would. He would be heading to the gallery now, anyway- why not invite the French boy along while he had the brave urge to do so?

Robert sat down in front of the café’s only telephone, and only had to keep his eyes closed for a few moments before he remembered Lucas’ home telephone number. He didn’t even begin to consider what he would do if there was no answer, and punched in each digit with his slightly trembling forefinger. It rang for a few seconds before Lucas picked up, making Robert suck in a breath.

“Allô?” The French artist’s thick accent answered, sounding surprised, confused. His tone wasn’t new to Robert and he couldn’t help but stifle a laugh.

“Hello, Lucas,” Robert replied, and pursed his lips, biting at them behind his smile. “It’s Robert.”

“Oh!” Lucas exclaimed, and Robert suddenly erupted into laughter, Lucas not seeming amused in the slightest. He was just puzzled. “Robert, hello!”

“Yes, hello,” Robert laughed out, shaking his head against the phone as he held it to his ear. Lucas seemed to grow even shyer then, a few moments’ pause between them on the phone. “I would have called earlier, but, uh… I was busy.” Robert knew that was a lie. He was just a chicken.

“Oh, c’est ok, c’est ok,” Lucas suddenly insisted, frantically, and Robert almost sighed, relieved to hear him talk like that again. The French boy’s accent was strangely calming and somewhat mystifying even when he was worried about something. “I was busy. Non, it’s okay.”

“Well, good,” Robert said, not realising he was smiling like a fool with excitement. “Listen, I was wondering if you’re free for this afternoon.” There was a pause and Robert quickly rephrased. “Are you busy today?” He asked. Lucas seemed to think in the next pause.

“I’m doing anything,” he said bluntly, and Robert paused again.

“Would you like to come to the National Gallery with me?” Another pause, longer, before Robert jumped at the excited tone of Lucas’ voice.

“Really? For real, are you serious?”

“Yes!” Robert laughed, taken by surprise. “Yes. I’m on my way there now and I thought you might like to join me.”

“Oui! Oh, mon Dieu.” Robert could hear shuffling and scuffling on the other end of the phone and he waited for a second more.

“Would you like to come, then? Now?”

“Yes!”

“Do you know how to get there?” Robert quickly realised that he didn’t know where in the city Lucas was.

“It is- Trafalgar Square, no?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“Oh, I know how to get there, yes.”

“Can you get there in half an hour?” Robert asked, and then Lucas made a little noise that Robert remembered him using when he didn’t understand something or he was trying to figure it out in French so that it would make more sense. “Oh,” Robert said quickly, laughing. “Uh… Trente minut?” He said sketchily. His middle-school French was as hazy as it had been when he was learning it, but he got it right nonetheless.

“Oh! Oui, oui- Sorry,” Lucas said with a little laugh, and Robert smiled as he leant his face against his palm. He was playing with the cord on the phone as he spoke, staring at the wall with his lit-up eyes.

“Can you get there?”

“Of course. Oui.”

“Génial,” Robert murmured, and he heard Lucas laugh again, a musical sound, before the French boy bid him goodbye and hung up the phone. Robert almost collapsed against the wall, feeling as if he had been holding his lungs full of air for too long, his whole body now light with excitement.

He hadn’t noticed that Michelle was watching him from behind the café counter, the back room visible from there. He didn’t know how long she had been standing there either, and while the conversation with Lucas on the phone wasn’t incriminating it still unsettled him to know she had been listening.

She was biting her lip and trying to smile. She hadn’t been eavesdropping; she wasn’t that nosy, but she had heard the conversation and she couldn’t help but feel a little twinge of jealousy and pain somewhere in her chest. Okay, so she was desperately trying to get Robert to notice her as more than a simple co-worker or even friend. She’d worked with him for about a year, which was a long time to work a bad job at a little city café, but she’d stayed for the horrible naïve reason that she wanted to be near Robert. He made her smile, with his little artistic nuances and his paint-stained jeans and his boring but oddly attractive face and how painfully honest he was about literally everything. So over-hearing a conversation that seemed like Robert had an interest elsewhere, felt like a little stab for Michelle. But she couldn’t be bitter about it because she loved the way Robert was smiling at that particular moment.

“I didn’t know you could speak French,” she said in a small, gentle voice as Robert came out from the back room. He had acknowledged the fact that his smile made him look like an idiot but he couldn’t make his face stop whatever it was that it was doing.

“I can’t,” Robert said with a little laugh, his cheeks heating up without him realising, before he started to shrug into his jacket.

“She sounds nice,” Michelle forced herself to say, despite a little sickly feeling that crept into her stomach. She sighed and quickly glanced down at the dirt-flecked tiles under her feet, before looking back at Robert, who was raising his eyebrow at her.

“She..? Oh. Oh, no,” Robert laughed, his cheeks then reddening further as he rubbed a hand over his face, soft chuckles bubbling in his throat. “No, he’s just a friend.”

Michelle raised her own eyebrows at the way Robert’s flushed face and nervous words didn’t quite match up. “So you swing that way, huh.” Robert went bug-eyed and bit his lip, not managing a laugh this time.

“Oh, no! I don’t. It’s not- It’s just, it’s…” He floundered for the right word, eventually scowling a little as he diverted his eyes to look at the counter. “No,” he mumbled quietly, and then he was laughing quietly into his hand as he rubbed it over his face. Michelle started laughing too, though nervously, and she ducked her head once the laughter died down, there being a soft and brief silence.

“Are you off now?” She asked, her tone of voice once more returning to be meek and passive. Robert smiled at her, face still flushed.

“Yeah.” He moved around her, past her, heading for the door before he stopped and turned, biting his lip. “He’s an artist,” he said quickly, excitedly, letting it slip from his mouth for no apparent reason as his face lit up. Michelle just let her face sadden considerably, though she was still somewhat smiling. She placed a dainty hand on the counter and brushed her dirty blonde hair from her face, not caring that she should probably get around to tying her hair up back into a ponytail.

“Yeah,” she managed to squeak out, almost trembling but trying to keep her calm front, and she lightly patted Robert’s hand, trying not to revel in how warm he felt. “Have fun.” He smiled at her until it became a wide grin.

“Thanks,” he said, before ducking his head and kissing Michelle’s cheek, turning quickly on his heel and dashing to the door, glancing over his shoulder and winking at her, and then he was gone. Michelle touched her cheek and looked down at the café counter until she was startled by a customer opening the door. She hadn’t seen Robert that happy in a very long time.